Not norwegian? I'm sorry.

Changed back to wordpress. which also means norwegian.
So, for you norwegian guys; heres's the blog:

http://asutori.wordpress.com/

Getting lost

Remember me saying Nagoya is extremely big?
Well, yesterday I learned something very important when it comes to living in such a big city; Don't go out cycling for three hours so that you get so lost that you have no idea which direction your home is in.
And, yeah, for those who don't already get it, that was exactly what happened to me yesterday. It was pretty scary. I mean, I had already been biking around without any idea where I was, but I had always somehow gotten back home again. It was first when I realized that I wouldn't find my home by myself, that I figured that asking for direction would be the best thing. Of course, I asked an old man, that probably didn't knew a word of English. But, wow, he sure was friendly! Seriously, he walked with me a really long way, and when I had to bike the way myself, he stood pointing and watching to make sure I went the right way.
After even more time, and asking an old lady to make sure I went the right way, I finally started to recognize the landscape. And, oh, what an amazing feeling that was. Biking around for three hours, with no idea where you are is slightly tiring..
And, uum, that's it. I found my way back home :-)

Btw, when it comes to pictures, I am going to publish some soon.. Just gotta put them into my mac first ^^.

Exploring Nagoya by bike (⌒v⌒)

Hello folks! I'm still alive and having a nice time here in Nagoya (o^∇^o)ノ
Things have calmed down a little, and I have already started to settle down.. a little at least.

The thing is that, except meeting new people and explore things my host family takes me with, I have a lot of free time. Considering.. I have no friends, no school, no club activities. Therefore, I asked - and got permission to - use one of the family's bikes. いち, に, さん - and off I go to explore my surroundings (with an map, of course). I really, really like it! (*＾▽＾*). Japan is just so clean and beautiful, and it have so many things to look at! I'm simply just amazed. Oh, yeah, and it's really fun because so many people is staring at me. They probably think I have stolen the bike or something. I mean, what other explanation do you find when you see a Gaijin on a bike.

じゃ まった!

Holy.. I'm in Japan :D

gosh, I feel like I have so much to write about now.
Firstly, I've had an amazing time at the Swedish orientation (that was really fun!) (fika..). Also, I've finally arrived in Japan! F-A-N-T-S-T-I-C :D
Right now I'm with my host family, which I am so happy about getting. It is just such an lovely and open-minded family. I remember being very, very nervous about meeting them. It felt like a thousand butterflies had some kind of war in my stomach. But, it turned out to go really well. Till now I have tried my school uniform, went to purikura, went on shopping, eating in a traditional japanese restaurant (welcome dinner.. how nice ^-^), and a lots of other things. I also just got a box of cupcakes from my neighbor! Apple, banana and green tea flavor. Ureshii! Reminds me.. my host mom makes really good food :D
Also, I've had this whole orientation in Tokyo.. 73 students from 17 countries.. It was so much fun :D

Sorry everyone.. I feel like I can't really express myself now, because writing everything in this blog would be impossible. But I'm just going to say that I've had an amazing time so far :D
ja mata ~

saying goodbye.

It's only a few days ago since I said goodbye to my friends and family back there in Mosjøen. It feels kinda strange, really. The whole thing about me going to Japan for 10-months.. It just dosen't feel real. And therefore, I feel like I haven't really said goodbye to my friends. Strange..
Anyways, I promised myself not to write too long posts, so I'm not really going into anything. Even though I have been to a few parties, and a really nice pizza night. And I've got presents! Two books with pictures of my friends and me :-D In the second book, it was even written a lot of stuff (eeh, nice explanation, right?). I was really happy about it (o^∇^o)ノ

And to those who don't know, I'm in Lillehammer right now, visiting the one side of my family. And, also, I've just visited one of my childhood friends, from Svelvik (stayed from friday to monday). That was nice (⌒v⌒)

it's just so.. smooth

From this day on, I'm no longer a braceface! My dentist just took them off, so my tongue is touching my teeth all the time. It's just so strange to feel the smoothness of them xD

Also, I succeeded with my shopping today. You see, I usually hate shopping, but today I ended up getting two jeans* and two skirts**! Also, I bought a lot of Norwegian candy (yay, YFU orientation!), and two types of brown cheese. So now I just need to start that bloody packing ><

* which increase my collection from one to three jeans.. I know, I only had one jeans before :p
** my two first skirts, yay! XD

Well, a lot ...

First off: I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've just been very busy lately, and when I actually have the time to write something fancy in this blog, I'm either wasting it on Facebook/Hotmail, or I'm just using the time to sleep. The last one mentioned is actually really tempting right now..
So, since I've been busy, there is also a lot that I would like to write in this blog. Something about a bunch of Hollenders, calling my host family (which was awesome, by the way), getting a new cellphone, going to a bus trip, writing to the newspapers and goodbye-party (probably more too) D:
But, at the same time that I would love writing all about this, I really don't feel like doing it.. If that made any sense to any of you .
Anyways, now I'm just going to complain a little, and that's it*.

The whole complaining part:
Ok.. so it's now four days until I leave Mosjøen, and I haven't even started packing. Neither have I started buying the things I'm going to bring with me to Japan (including presents and all..). Eheh- so I guess it's time for me to start doing that. I mean, since I'll be gone for one year and all..

Yeah, *that's it. This post was mostly just to say that I'm still alive, and to.. eh-- "prepare" you for the fact that I wouldn't always write about everything. (ok, bad excuse..) :-p

Nagoya, here I come.. :D

Ok, I promised to tell you a little about my host family, so now it's time for me to keep that :-P

So, I was calling YFU yesterday, wondering what I should write in the visa application under 'host family'. The immediate answer made me pretty shocked; "but you already have a family". And then along came this whole conversation with the YFU Representative and me talking about why I didn't got the message in January (!), when it was supposed to come. Well, honestly, at that moment I was more exited about it, than ready to have a proper conversation, but never mind that.. Didn't hear much more than that, since the telephone connection was pretty bad at that moment. But she promised to send me a mail later with a little information about them.

So, when the information mail came, this is what I got to know: I'm living in Nagoya, a BIG city with amazingly 2,2 million citizen. That's pretty much if you look at Mosjøen's 10 000 citizen.
And when it comes to my family, I have a otoosaan (company employee), okaasan (housewife), a big brother (18), and two host sisters witch is 10 and 16 years old. I'm terribly happy about that! :D

< Nagoya is somewhere in that pink spot.

Moving on, my school's name is Nagoya City Nagoya Commercial High School (neat name, ne?). I think it would take a little more than 1 hour to travel to it (according google maps), so that's pretty sad. But, on the other hand, at least it have a brand new campus XD And it is a commercial school, which I think means that it's some kind of business school.

I have a host family!

Going to write a post about it later, telling you all about it and all :)
But in the meantime, you'll just have to wait *evil laugh* XD

At least I'm warning you

OK, lately, I've been writing posts often. Which in many ways is great, but also means that I get slightly less time for other things - like being social, study Japanese, or anything like that. Not that I use this terribly long time in writing posts, but.. don't we all know how easy it is to 'just' check your facebook, and just 'take a look' at something, etc? (≧≦)
So, when I'm in Japan I have decided that I would try to leave my mac alone for as much as possible, which means I wouldn't be writing posts that often. I just feel that living my life in Japan is ten times more important than updating my blog (sorry everyone). Unless, of course, I get a cell phone and be able to just 'send a post' directly from it (which would be awesome).

And, another thing, I found this whole website full of kaomoji - Japanese smileys - if anyone is interested (^_-)☆
here's the link: http://jankey.hp.infoseek.co.jp/kaomoj.shtml

Package from YFU!

Yesterday, when I checked my mail, I found a slip saying there were a package from YFU waiting for me at the post house. You can guess I was excited for that; especially since I haven't heard anything from YFU in a long time now. So, I went down to town, meet some people down there, and then got the package right before I was going to the cinema (we watched Bolt, a Disney film). At that time I was waving the package around, being very happy to have got something concerning the exchange year. Sadly, I didn't got any information about my host family, but reading the slip from my mail, I already knew that I wouldn't. What I did get however, was a lot of information about visa, a Japanese study-book (!), boarding times, etc.
I certainly have enough information now, which I'm looking forward to read all about when I get the time to just sit down and take my time. Hopefully that wouldn't take too long till I do.

On a totally different note, I'm afraid I'm about to get sick D: gosh, I really hope it goes over soon, I hate this feeling.

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK

Ok, maybe I'm not a Cyborg. But I did watch a movie with that name last night. Silje, Magdalena and I watched it, actually. While I was laughing almost throughout the whole film, Silje and Magdalena seemed to be quiet most of the time. Maggi was even sleeping during the movie (guess that not a good sign?) :-P
Well, anyways, ask me and I would say it was amazing! I really liked the mix of humor, romance, drama and some kind of black humor. And the actors, and the scenes, and the plot, and the color of the film, and, well.. I liked almost everything about it. Especially the fact that this ain't exactly the most mainstream film, and far away from a Hollywood production (it's actually Korean).
Though, as I said first; my two friends didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did, so I can't say this is a film that fits everyone. But I definitely encourage people to watch it anyways.

By the way, Wikipedia is a good friend if you would like to read more about the plot and all.

Oh, just school

Departure time is getting closer and closer for each day. Today there are 28 days until I leave Norway, and only 16-17 days till I leave Mosjøen (my home town), which is pretty stressful to think about. I feel like there's so much I have to do before I leave, but every time I'm thinking about what exactly I should do, my head is suddenly completely empty. Instead I'm just sitting here at school, doing mostly what I would normally do, even though my head is full of thoughts because of this whole exchange thing. Except - I'm coming late for school almost every day, I'm doing badly at tests, and I'm not doing any homework anymore. This because I know that whatever I do this semester, it wouldn't count on my testimony (had to look that word up) - because I'm going this semester again.

Swing

Guess what? I've been dancing Swing this weekend!
I, that never really dances, suddenly decides to go to a Swing class. Why, you ask? Well, I wanted to learn something new, thus, my friends made me go (>∇<).. Anyways, it was loads of fun, and it was really nice to actually learn something new.

Haha, - how nice it was to write such a short post (⌒v⌒)

Hello blogger :-)

For those of you that don't know, my name is Astri. I'm a 16 years old girl from Norway. I'm going to Japan as an exchange student from March 2009 till January 2010. Phew- nice to have cleared that out. :-P

I also have this wordpress-blog, but because I'm easily tired of things (yeah, I know that's not a good thing, but it's just how it is), I decided to try out blogger too. I just think it seems more fit for writing these short posts, so that I don't have to use too much time on the blog. Because, if I had to use to much time on the blog, I would be tired. Also, maybe I'll be able to use my cellphone to write a post or two - that would be cool 8D

If there is anything you would like me to write about, something you would like to comment, or if there is anything you are wondering about, please don't hesitate writing it too me. My e-mail is Astriud@hotmail.com if you would like to send a mail.